Elevator systems provide a variety of types of passenger service within a variety of buildings. In smaller buildings one or two elevators may be provided to adequately address the needs for all passengers in that building. Other buildings have much larger volumes of passenger traffic on a daily basis. Such buildings typically include a large number of elevators.
Controlling all of the elevators to achieve a desired level of passenger service involves a variety of considerations. There are various known dispatching algorithms for determining which car should service a particular passenger request.
One shortcoming of known arrangements is that they require a plurality of group dispatchers, each assigned to a particular subset of the elevators within a building. Passenger requests are processed by a group dispatcher that determines which of the elevator cars within its own group can service that request. For buildings containing a large number of elevator cars, a substantial number of group dispatchers are also required. While such arrangements have proven useful, those skilled in the art are always striving to make improvements.